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Serina
Imagine, if you will, a hypothotical world much like our own, but populated only by a very small sampling of creatures, which were then allowed to evolve entirely on their own for hundreds of millions of years until their ancestors resembled them barely at all. Now imagine if those colonists were highly specialized creatures, animals which would never have the means to exploit as many varied niches anywhere else due to competition from other animals. Imagine an entire world where the only land animal present is a canary - a world without reptiles, amphibians, or mammals. This is Serina '''- the world of birds. '''Serina is an ongoing, chronological world-building exercise and speculative evolution project that explores the natural history of a fictional terraformed moon, two thirds the size of Earth and orbiting a large gas giant in the habitable zone of an alternate solar system, populated by only a handful of organisms including grasses, sunflowers, ants, crickets, guppies, and - most notably of all - a single land vertebrate: the domestic canary. Our journey to this strange world will take us from the very beginning and then progress steadily along though the eons as the world's newly introduced life adapts to and evolves to suit its strange, new and ever-changing environment. It would be here, upon a little blue and green moon, perhaps put together by some unknown highly intelligent being(s) but soon after left to its own devices for countless millennia, a magnificent new biosphere would take shape. It was to be a world truly "for the birds" - but not in a bad way. ~~~ The Hypostecene: 0 - 10 million years Serina's atmosphere following the establishment of its ecosystem was very similar to Earth's, with oxygen at this time making up 24 percent of the atmosphere. The climate on the moon during this era was more tropical than Earth's currently and averaged roughly 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or 16 degrees Celsius. The temperate belts of the planet during this period were reduced in comparison to our own and the tropics extended further both north and south. Only the northernmost and southernmost regions experienced prolonged temperatures below freezing, and unlike Earth, Serina at this time would have had no permanent ice caps whatsoever. It would be a warm and mild garden world, ideally designed to accommodate its new children as well as was possible during their establishment upon the world. Lasting from 0 to 10 million years post-establishment (PE), this mild and prosperous era would come to be known as the Hypostecene - the "Foundation Era". Serina at this time would be made up predominately of a single super-sized, winding supercontinent known as Cirrus, which would remain together for less than twenty million years before the moon's high level of volcanism split them again. Composed of five individual landmasses connected by comparably thin land bridges, which run both north to south and east to west in a wide arc across the majority of the moon's face, these landmasses were known at this time as Anciska, Striata, Stehvlandea, Wahlteria, and Karii. In theory, by walking across them, one could move - without ever crossing sea - from one pole to the next. Though the various landmasses would soon after this era be pulled into increasing isolation, for the entirety of this earliest and most important time-span they would remain attached, permitting a smooth colonization and migration of all introduced fauna to spread out and thriv The Tempuscene: 11 - 50 million years A biome map of Serina fifteen million years PE, showing tectonic changes since the Hypostecene, among them the separation of Anciska and Striata and the full fusion of Striata southwards with Wahlteria, which has nearly closed off a large inland ocean, as the supercontinent of Cirrus breaks into two distinct landmasses for the first time. Anciska itself also begins to pull apart, with its north moving eastwards and its south southwards towards Stehvlandea, widening a thin land bridge. '' It is now fifteen million years since Serina's establishment, and the Hypostecene is over. In the last few million years, Serina has entered into a new climactic condition, with the moon gradually exhibiting '''a worldwide trend towards cooling and the spread of aridity'. Within five million years of Serina's abandonment, once life had been allowed to establish itself firmly to its new ecology, initially mild and tropical conditions had already begun to dissolve, unsustainable without artificial maintenance. Instead, the world of Serina began to revert towards the drier grassland world its geography naturally would sustain best. With the gradual decrease in precipitation over much of the moon, bamboo forests which spread from pole to pole within only a few million years of establishment began to retreat to a smaller number of remaining, isolated regions still moist enough to support their rapid and lush growth, as hardier prairie grasses, sunflowers, and dandelion derivatives reclaimed much of their former range. Less reliant on high precipitation, these plants can store large quantities of water and nutrients in underground roots and tubers and guard it from hungry animals with spines and unpalatable tissues. Where rainfall is too low for bamboo to grow, but higher than on the open grasslands, sunflower barrens transform into the beginnings of a new sustainable woodland type as suddenly as other floral groups develop tolerance to the toxic tannins they produce and evolve to compete beside them. Beginning eleven million years PE, Serina entered the Tempuscenic Era. Characterized by a gradual shift of the Serinan world from tropical to temperate, it will bring Serina's first ice age as seasonal ecosystems will begin to outnumber tropical, the latter of which will soon be confined solely to a thin but rich ring along the equator, as the polar regions of Serina begins to experience snowfall for the first time. Only a taste of what is now to come, at the era's height Serina will develop its first permanently frozen polar ice caps, which will not melt again tens of millions of years. Serina will not become a snowball world, however, any more than our own world is today. Winter will still give way to spring, and spring to summer. A seasonal rotation on a tilted access means Serina experiences its seasons not unlike our own. There will always be balance, and life - now well established - will go on. Migration becomes widespread, as animals are forced away from comfortable home ranges with increasing changes in their environments as winter and summer grow increasingly different. Faced with these same challenges, Serina's flora begin their most noticeable evolution yet, beginning to take on appearances increasingly unlike their ancestors and to grow in new, innovative ways, carving their own path up the tree of life silently, often overshadowed - but not stopped - by the lively activities of the insects and animals around them. As desertification spreads, it is the towering tree-like sunflowers that slowly become Serina's equivalents to the cacti and other hardy succulents of Earth, reducing their foliage to only a seasonal flush, eventually for some to lose it all together in favor of swollen and spiny trunks with only their vibrant golden blossoms to ever belay their ancient ancestry as a common garden plant and roadside weed - but other plants will soon rise again to compete. Remaining equatorial and patchy temperate forest is still dominated by bamboo, which now lies overshadowed by more drought-tolerant flora in most of the rest of the rest of the world. In millennia to come, however, it will experience a resurgence, as the Tempuscenic and the changes it has brought will be the foundation - thanks to some little helpers - for the next major innovation in the plant kingdom which will put them one day again on par to - and perhaps even beyond - their hardier foresting counterparts. Conditions will no longer be universally paradisaical and pristine in a changing world, but change brings adaptation. Change is the only thing, anywhere, at any time, that always stays the same. As it always has, life goes on. And as it goes on, it becomes ever more distinct, unique, and diverse Though the world was always volcanic and experienced occasional eruptions on a local level, starting 66 million years PE, Serina experiences an increase in volcanism on a larger and more global scale than ever before. In particular, a large mantle plume known as the Striatan Traps developed in the north of Striata which started to steadily bubble up magma 9.5 million years ago and continued almost continuously for nearly 1.5 million years, producing a flood basalt near Serina's north pole. A series of rolling hills and plateaus of basalt rock at times over 8,000 feet high now covers an area of nearly 400,000 square kilometers, or just under the area of California. '''Though the main pulse of volcanism from the traps ended 8 million years ago, occasional smaller eruptions continue to occur every few hundred thousand years, adding to the flood which could return in earnest at any time though appears on the path to dormancy. By 75 million years PE, the '''Cryocene is over; in a dramatic 180 degree role reversal, the Thermocene, marked by a period of high global temperatures and widespread tropical conditions, begins. The effect of the traps event on Serina's climate has been dramatic. Because the viscosity of basalt lava is very low, simply flowing rather than blowing up from the ground, and "traps" type volcanoes do not explode powerfully enough to release much ash or debris into the atmosphere, the Striatan traps never clouded the atmosphere as other types of volcanism may, saving an already highly temperate Serina from potentially freezing over entirely in a years-long winter. Instead, the past 10 million years have brought an extraordinarily intense and rapid period of warming. As the traps bubbled up over what was formerly Striata's tundra - a region abundant with carbon-rich peat bogs - enormous underground coal beds caught fire across the northern hemisphere, wildfires so large and intense to be visible as a ring from space which released great quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into Serina's atmosphere. In less than one million years Serina's average temperature rose by as much as 27 degrees Fahrenheit - from 48 to 75. The ice caps receded and disappeared and tropical forests previously restricted to isolated bands on the moon's equator spread toward the newly inviting polar regions in just a few thousand years. Serina has seen a swift and almost complete extinction of all of its polar lifeforms as jungles and rich subtropical woodlands creep almost as far north and south as the edges of the former icecaps - only a handful of such polar life has managed to adapt to a warmer world, but the generalist boarbird, derived from the polar canaribou, is a notable example of a creature which managed to back out of its specialization and do just that, giving rise to a new line of western carnivores. Few other groups of land animals were severely affected, even the largest among them; the warming climate has been a boon to most large egg-laying birds such as serestriders and aardgeese, giving them back a new competitive advantage to live-bearing vivas which experienced domination in the coldest environments of the Cryocene. The spread of tropical conditions also benefited Serina's ecothermic animals; the frog-like mudwickets, slithering eelsnakes, and other terrestrial fish descendents as well as insects have generally fared well in the new era, but perhaps most interestingly the warming world has begun to have a strange effect on certain endothermic birds which begin to graduate away from a warm-blooded biology to a less energy-intensive one dependent on the now generally reliable warm temperatures of the environment to maintain their body temperatures, giving them their own advantage in needing less food to get by than equivalent competitors. The effect on the world's ecosystems has not been universally beneficial however - it was catastrophic for some. The sea has been the worst affected of all biomes, with surface temperatures at equatorial latitudes surpassing one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the first few thousand years during the peak of volcanism. At first here almost all sea life beyond the microscopic died, with only a few types of bacteria and cyanobacteria persisting that could take the heat. Initially without either competitors or predators these tenacious organisms were able to form colorful blue, green, and red mats on the surface of the stagnant water, to the inadvertent result of shading and cooling it just enough so that over time a community of smaller fishes and invertebrates could return beneath it, feeding on the mats of plant material near the surface, though more than a few meters down the sea remained anoxic not unlike in Serina's earliest days. Over the following millions of years, equatorial seas would recover some of their diversity, but it will be some time yet before they are anything like their previous glory, for perhaps most notably, there are no longer any reefs. Acid rain reduced the pH of the oceans, dissolving the shells of the bivalves and hydra; the reefs formed by the former did not survive the end of the Cryocene, and though the latter persisted, it was only through the most exceptional already-established diversity of the group in comparison to coral on Earth. Though all reefs in the sea bleached and crumbled at the end of the Cryocene, primitive freshwater relatives of reef-building hydras in isolated environments less affected by acidification lived on to eventually reclaim what were formerly the polar oceans. Among larger animals, the largest filter-feeding whalebirds died out in a warming world as the population of plankton they relied on for their survival crashed with the warming of the cold polar seas; herbivorous pelicanaries related to the bloon as well as small coastal forms, however, survived, though it will be some time before they rival their forebears in size, for though the seas are stabilizing again, they are no longer as productive without cold polar waters rich in nutrients to give rise to large plankton blooms and few sea creatures at this time, sans some herbivores, grow much larger than a porpoise. The giant sea slugs too have gone extinct, survived only by far smaller representatives. Though the seas are overall less rich than in past, colder eras, they are larger; the loss of all of Serina's glaciation has resulted in a dramatic rise in sea level, illustrated perhaps most dramatically on the southeast landmass of Karii, now split apart by a massive inland sea. Flooding also divided the supercontinent formed by the fusion of Striata and Whalteria, and though South Anciska and Stehvlandea long ago collided as well, the rise in sea level has temporary divided these two lands once again as well. Even North Anciska has been split into two by a combination of continental drift and rising sea levels, with its northernmost section moving towards the pole. Though their edges are obscured by the high sea levels, a general pattern is also beginning to take shape of the east and west converging toward a central point. Lying between the hemispheres, the Kyran Islands, now an archipelago, remain isolated, but they will one day soon find themselves squeezed between two much larger continents; a new supercontinent is set to form. Despite rising global temperatures, most of Serina's terrestrial environments were saved from desertification by the shape and size of the land, preventing a potential mass extinction here as well. With its land divided into many small landmasses, rather than one or only a handful of large supercontinents, rainfall distributions remained wide enough to still support rainforests along most coasts and through many inland regions, though South Anciska, Karii, and Whalteria did develop large interior deserts. Cactus sunflowers and other desert flora quickly colonized these newly opened habitats while tropical grassland, sunflower woodland and ant-symbiotic bamboo jungles spread to dominate elsewhere, with floral groups specialized to cold polar areas, particularly the pineflower forests, finding only the peaks of the tallest mountains in polar regions sufficiently cool for their survival. They will ride out these climactic arks as long as they can, but it remains to be seen if the climate will be generous enough to leave these very last refuges suitable for their long-term survival, for though ten million years have passed since the start of the Striatan traps the climate has only cooled off again by a few degrees to nowhere near its Cryocene levels. Serina remains for now a true hothouse world, but eventually the carbon-sink will be restored by the world's plant life, and the moon will likely return to pre-traps temperature levels, if not the extreme seen during the Cryocene era. After the worst mass-extinction in Serina's history, life recovers''' in a wild new era. '''s the single connected super continent of the Pangeacene officially breaks in two for the first time 243 million years PE, the Pangeacene reaches its conclusion, giving way to the Ultimocene. As we come to the Ultimocene, we are faced with an important question which was not, before, so relevant. How might life on Serina end? For this evolutionary thought experiment, the end will be a cold one. Serina is a small world of indeterminate age, meaning that as time wears on - like all celestial bodies - it has been slowly losing heat. For our scenario, this cooling begins to reach noticeable levels around this time. The Ultimocene will be defined by the gradual extinction of Serina's volcanism '''as a result of the cooling of Serina's mantle. The extinction of volcanism will be a slow and irregular process, resulting in many alternating periods of glaciation when volcanism is minimal or absent and a resurgence of a warmer climate and rapid sea level rise during brief periods of renewed volcanic activity, but as the Ultimocene progresses, glacial periods will last longer and reprieves be fewer and further between.' As the mantle cools, tectonic movement slows and finally stops. The subduction of the plates under the mantle will eventually halt, and new land will cease to be made. The continents will start to erode, and without any volcanic activity, Serina will eventually be overtaken by an ice age to which there will be no end. '''The end of the Ultimocene will be the end of life on Serina. ' But that time has not come yet. The Ultimocene will cover an entire third of Serina's habitable lifespan and will further be divided into three acts - namely the early, mid, and late Ultimocene, all of which will demonstrate different conditions for the planet's life to adapt to. The early Ultimocene will serve as the finale for the world of birds, as plant and animal life reaches levels of derivity unlike anything before, while the middle Ultimocene will be a time of great change, and the late a final show of tenacity for the world's ultimate survivors. '''The entirity of Serina's final epoch will last more than one hundred million years, and though it starts out as a sort of second Thermocene - warm, wet and ideal for life of all kinds - as it progresses, the era will experience frequent and dramatic changes of climate which will force rapid adaptation - or extinction - of life. Long periods of stability will become a thing of the distant past as Serina approaches the end of its habitable period. ''' Category:Projects Category:Serina Category:Birds Category:Alternative Evolution